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Where here and there a building stands,
And town and country-side join hands,
Before me stood a massive wall
With engine-rooms and chimneys tall.
To scale the place a way I found,
And, creeping in, looked all around;
There bicycles of every grade
Are manufactured for the trade;
Some made for baby hands to guide,
And some for older folk to ride.

"Though built to keep intruders out,
With shutters thick and casings stout,
I noticed twenty ways or more,
By roof, by window, wall and door,

Where we, by exercising skill,
May travel in and out at will."

Another spoke, in nowise slow
To catch at pleasures as they go,
And said, "Why let another day
Come creeping in to drag away?
Let's active measures now employ
To seize at once the promised joy.
On bicycles quick let us ride,

While yet our wants may be supplied."
So when the town grew hushed and still,
The Brownies ventured down the hill,
And soon the band was drawing nigh
The building with the chimneys high.

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HERE we are again, my merry friends, but where do we find ourselves? Where, but face to face with November,-to my mind the most trying child of all the year's twelve.

You see November is just like some of you young chaps who are too old to go with boys and too young to go with men. You feel queer and out of place, in spite of yourselves. So does November. He is not quite strong enough for winter and he has too much "go" in him for autumn. He scorns to be warm, and he is afraid to be cold. His very name shows his contrary state of mind. He's no vember! You just try to be no vember, and see where you find yourself,-especially if you are not quite sure what a "vember" is.

Be

And right here comes the point of my discourse. I want you to help this poor troubled fellow. patient with him. Put all the cheer into him you can, and be kind, generous, gracious, and jolly, so as to make every one at home say: "Why, what a delightful, pleasant month November is! charming indoors and out!"

And now let us hear from our friend, S. B. H.,

who knows all about those

MOON RAINBOWS.

BERGEN POINT, N. J. DEAR JACK: Many different appearances are seen in the nightsky, and called lunar rainbows, which come from various causes. A lunar rainbow is like a solar rainbow, only paler, and more colorless. The rainbow is such a curve that if it were carried out it

would make a perfect circle. Now, as a fact too difficult to explain here, the center of this circle, the eye of the observer and the moon must lie in a straight line, the bow on one side of the heavens, where rain is falling, the moon on the other, and the observer between. Now, Jack, you can never see a bow which is more than half a

circle, because the line running from the moon and through your

pulpit cannot strike higher than the horizon, so only half the circle can be above the horizon. A rainbow was once seen from a balloon, so high up as to show the whole circular bow.

it. Ordinary light, you know, is made up of blue and green and yellow and red light, and all sorts of between shades. The prism not only bends the ray of light, but it bends the blue part most, the green next, the yellow next, and the red least; so that if we catch the ray on a piece of paper, after it has come through the prism we shall have, not the one little white ray that went in, but a band of colors -blue, green, yellow, and red. Rain drops, ice crystals, and even fog, have the same power as the prism.

In a rainbow, a part of the rays from the moon, besides being bent aside, as they enter the rain drops, are bent back from the farther side and spread out into color

A fog-bow, like a rainbow, is on the opposite side of the sky from the sun or moon. Mr. Whymper, an Alpine tourist, tells of a wonderful fog-bow he once saw. He, with four companions, had been climbing over the ice-fields. Suddenly all four were lost down one of the fathomless ice-clefts, and he was alone in the awful solitude. He looked up to the sky, and there a great bow spanned the heavens, and within it were two large white crosses.

The bows described in the childrens' letters are not lunar bows, but the whole or parts of halos or coronas around the moon. Such circles are caused by the light's coming to the eye through prisms of ice or fog, the light is bent aside or refracted, and spread out by the ice or the fog, but not bent back or reflected, as by the rain drops in the case of the rainbow. In a halo the light comes through ice-crystals; these are commoner in winter, and in the far north. In a corona it comes through fog; these are more frequent in our climate. A halo you can tell from a corona, because the innermost color of the ring is red, while in the corona it is blue. Your readers can make a little corona for themselves by sprinkling some lycopodium powder on a piece of glass, and looking through it at a light.

The rings R. L. F. saw around the sun were halos; the "sun-dogs" tion of the ice-crystals, which makes only round spots in certain parts or "mock-suns" were parts of halos, caused by a very peculiar condi

of a halo visible. I think he must have made a mistake as to the

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time of day when he saw them.

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A triangular prism of glass bends aside the light that falls through jacket that their brothers always wear. Does any

body else know of a chestnut-tree without burrs? Amos says the farmers tell him it is the only one known in that region, and they regard the tree with its burrless nuts as quite a curiosity.

While we are upon this subject, here is a letter describing another oddity in plant-life,-in fact a genuine

another that there is not more than an inch of space between any two, and the little copper-skinned native often pricks his fingers badly while gathering the sharp needles.

When they have collected a large quantity, they carry them home,

and the mother hangs them on lines in front of the low adobe hut. After a few hours' exposure to the sun, the juice dries out, and the needles and threads are ready for use.

"At the railroad stations near Monterey," says my friend, "I saw an interesting sight. On the floor were piles of cloth made from the coarser fibers of the Maguey and woven in a loom of simplest device, similar to that in which the Chinese manufacture their matting.

"Here, in his leather costume, sat an Indian, folding bags in which pecan-nuts are exported to New York and other cities. Scattered around him were scores of these natural nee, dles. He used them to join three sides of the bag with a sort of cross-stitch. They were then filled with the nuts, and closed at the top with a twine twisted from the same fiber."

How many vexations a little Mexican girl may be spared in making her doll's wardrobe by the use of this slender, eyeless needle, "not hard to pull through," and a thread that never comes out, because it has grown there, and will never twist nor get into a snarl! Kind Nature has supplied this half-civilized people, who are not ingenious enough to invent intricate machinery to produce these articles, with a needle that never breaks, already filled with many threads.

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DEAR JACK: A friend of mine who was traveling in Mexico not long since, says that across the Rio Grande where the Maguey-plant, shown in the accompanying picture, grows wild, it is called the "needle-and-thread plant." The Indian boys

search for it and, on finding one with dark-brown thorns, they grasp the thickened end, and, with a quick jerk, pull out the spines, or needles, with their sinewy fibers, or threads, attached.

In some varieties, these woody thorns crowd so closely upon one

One of the most curious uses of this thread is the making of a hair-brush from it. The shape of the brush is like that of a curtain-tassel, and it is made from the fibers doubled over and tied around with a twine. Once a week the squaw has the task of combing her husband's long raven locks with this brush. She sits on a rude bench, her spouse at her feet, while she humbly performs this household duty. He then returns her kindness and carefully smooths her glossy hair.-Your friend, A. W. W.

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